South Florida voting: Long lines drag voting late into the night

In Broward County, all 778 precincts were closed about 10 p.m. About 500 people were still waiting to vote at three polling places about 9 p.m., said Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes.

"I don't know of people being turned away," Snipes said.

The final precinct was counted about 12:40 a.m. Wednesday. About 30,000 absentee ballots will be counted later Wednesday, officials said. The canvassing board will reconvene Thursday to review problem absentee and provisional ballots.

Nikki Tarquinio, of Tamarac, said she survived a three-hour, 45-minute election line outside Millennium Middle School during the mid-day hours.

"People were getting very aggravated," Tarquinio said. "People were hot and thirsty. No indication was given how long it would be."

At 10 p.m. — three hours after polls closed — 174 of Miami-Dade's 829 polling stations still had voters in line. The elections department sent some 150 optical scanners throughout the day to trouble precincts where long lines stretched for blocks.

Reuters reported after 11 p.m. that the results in Miami-Dade would not be available until Wednesday afternoon.

A high voter turnout and a long ballot, along with some reported glitches at some precincts, contributed to the electoral endurance test now in its final moments as the votes are counted.

"We're doing really well," Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Susan Bucher said. "It's 9:30 and we've got 772 of 842 precincts reporting. That's pretty good. There will probably be a few cartridges that don't read, so we'll have to count those ballots."

In Broward County, election officials scrambled to resupply "quite a few" precincts that reported running out of ballots even as voters continued to arrive, according to elections office spokeswoman Mary Cooney.

The lines started at many polling places before the polls opened at 7 a.m. As they waited, voters in Broward and Palm Beach counties drank coffee, used smartphones and chatted as workers prepared to open the doors.

But by mid-day many of those lines had dissipated and wait times shortened, according to election expected to grow. But even before the evening rush, voters reported two-hour plus lines.

Scattered reports of malfunctioning ballot scanners popped up in both Broward and Palm Beach counties through the morning and early afternoon, and elections officials in both jurisdictions said the problems were being quickly addressed by roving teams of technicians.

Parkland Commissioner John Willis said there was one scanner for a half-dozen voting booths at Park Trails Elementary resulting in a four-hour wait that discouraged some voters.

"At least 2 dozen people told me they weren't voting because they couldn't wait in the line," Willis said.

At 8 p.m., an estimated two-hour line still wrapped around the school and Willis said voters, "aren't being told anything by anybody."

The voting wait times appeared to be even worse in Miami-Dade County. The wait at the United Teachers of Dade Tower in Brickell exceeded six hours throughout the day. Even voters who arrived before the polls opened at 7 a.m. found themselves stuck in a seemingly endless line.

Poll watchers said the precinct was understaffed and poorly organized. For one, poll workers had trouble finding voters' names in the hard-copy registry because two precincts (and six sub-precincts) were voting at one location.

And of the eight ballot scanners, only two were working, said Manuel E. Iglesias, a volunteer attorney for the Romney campaign. Only two people were able to vote at any one time, he said.

It sparked outbursts of anger across the region. At the Church of the Palms in Delray Beach, the long wait and what appeared to be a broken scanner touched off what voter Blake MacDiarmid called "almost a yuppie revolt."

"The crowd was very irritated," he said. "From what I'm hearing this is one of a number of snafus. It's just a continuation of Palm Beach County nonsense."

The scanners were programmed to store ballots that are later scanned by poll workers at the end of the night, officials said.

"These things will happen, but also we have back-up systems to ensure that all votes are counted," said Evelyn Perez-Verdia, a spokeswoman for the Broward Supervisor of Elections Office.

Votes that will not be counted, however, are about 700 absentee ballots in Broward County that lacked signatures as required by law. Perez-Verdia confirmed that the canvassing board met Monday night and rejected them.

In Palm Beach County, Supervisor of Elections Susan Bucher was also quick to assure voters that no mechanical malfunctions would prevent any vote from being tallied.